THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 1899.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXVI, Issue 11229, 25 November 1899, Page 4

THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 1899.

It is not unlikely that the close oi the nineteenth century will be mainly noticeable in history for that remarkable racial revival which is reuniting the widely-scattered English-speak-ing peoples. For riot merely are the self-governing communities loyally subject to the / British Crown voluntarily taking upon themselves due share in the Imperial burden, but the great American branch of our common stock is being drawn by resistless influences within the sphere of our Imperial polity. Blood and speech, race and religion, are triumphing at last over distances and differences. This is the true inwardness of the stand made by Lord Salisbury against proposed European intervention on behalf of Spain in the late Cuban war, a stand to which American authorities gratefully acknowledged the miscarriage of conceived hostile coalition; and the true inwardness of the evident determination of the United States Government to throw its sword into the balancc should our Empire be attacked by any nation under cloak of intervention in the Boer war.; ' At the outbreak of hostilities in South Africa, ' a' peculiarly-worded

declaration of neutrality was issued by the Washington Government. This was generally interpreted to mean, and generally accepted as meaning, that the United States would be neutral only so long as England was not attacked by a European Power, in which event the two great English-speaking nations ■would make common cause against all assailants. That such noble friendship, unknown since the classic days of the Hellenic League, was really meant has been confirmed by the unqualified utterances of Mr. 0. Breckinridge, a trusted diplomatist and lately American Minister at St. Petersburg. While of high value as approving the position the British peoples have taken up in the Transvaal question, Mr. Breckinridge s statement is of special importance in those sentences which deal with "the duty and development of the Anglo-Saxon race," and the American obligation "by every sentiment of patriotism and every tie of racial kinship to stand shoulder to shoulder with our brethren across the sea." Nor is this all. Since the day when the very suggestion of an Anglo-American war over the Venezuelan dispute roused in England and America alike a passionate protest which swept away all misunderstandings, a protest in which the Prince of Wales took dignified, if unprecedented, part, and in which the worthiest and wealthiest citizens of the great Republic unanimously voiced a righteous indignation at the possibility of again desecrating the sacred claims of kinship, the reunion of our race has been taken from the weak though willing hands of statesmen and diplomatists by the inscrutable Power that orders the destinies of men and of peoples. Without a treaty, without any definite compact, without even a formal resolution by any governing body, the thing has been done. The cordial recognition by our Imperial Government of American suzerainty over the Latin-American States—so happily resultant now in the peaceful and satisfying conclusion of the oficethreatening Venezuelan question— was followed by the forcing of that principle upon reluctant Spain and the sudden entry of the United States into the front rank of the great World-Powers. She entered that front rank not merely under the friendly protection of England, but actually because she is English. As a matter of fact the American people have never ceased to be bone of our bone, flesh of our flesh. Whether their Government sat at London or at Washington, whether they governed themselves under a president or under a sovereign, really mattered little. The unfortunate policy of the Georgian era, against which Chatham made such noble protest, drove the American colonies from beneath the flag, but could not drive them from the race of which they were part, nor from the world-conquest which is its mission. The ultimate triumph of tne principles for which the American colonists contended and Chatham so eloquently pleaded, the generous and unlimited granting by England of self-government to all colonies of British blood, has not only bound us to the Mother Country by bonds that are of our own making, but has gradually removed the not unnatural American distrust of the Imperial Government. The principles of 1776 have triumphed from end tt end of the English-speaking world. Princes of the blood, Ministers of the Crown, primates of the Church, marshals of the army, captains of industry, have united with the rank and file of the nation in acknowledging the debt due to those American colonists who bore their English liberties over sea and refused to part with them. And the American, no longer looked upon as the child of rebels, but as the child of patriots, of fathers accused no longer of breaking up the race, but honoured as the guardians in time of need of its most precious treasures, feels the race love, smothered so long, well upwards in his heart, and turns again to his kin with a yearning to be of them, often humorous, more often deeply pathetic, in its naive intensity. He "does" Shakespere's birthplace and Milton's burying-place with a devotion which we who have not left our father's house in anger cannot appreciate. He remembers with pride that Cromwell was among the founders of the Empire, and is moved to tears at the world-wide recognition of Washington as one of England's greatest sons. It has been said— man is so strangely confounded that it is possibly true—that the American will never feel quite himself beside the Englishman until he has drawn the sword in England's quarrel and poured his blood and treasure in her cause. And certain it is that whereever Englishmen and Americans foregather, from the Imperial city to the furthest nook in far outlands whither men of our adventuring race have wandered, there is continuously and persistently being shown a reciprocal cordiality unusual to cur reserved Northern natures. " He who touches one touches both," is a feeling that is uttered in a thousand forms, and vibrates from heart to heart throughout the AngloAmerican world. Doubtless there are Americans and Americans, even as there are Englishmen and Englishmen. -But every honest American, regardless of political creed, realises that the rest of the English-speaking world is circumstanced as his own country is, and is confronted by common difficulties, and must solve common problems in a common way. Whether he approves or opposes expansion, he sees his counterpart in Britain and in the British colonies, likewise approving or opposing. He feels that his own country's politics are after all only provincial, that there is a broader, wider sphere in which he must and should and wishes to be, the world-wide policy of that great race of which he is part, of the lands which speak the tongue which is his own. ' America is as much Anglo-Saxon as is Greater England. Both have absorbed .without difficulty Scandinavians; and Germans, and have managed to digest without fatal results a considerablenon-Teutonic element. It is our English boast

that we have ever been thus composite. America has only continued .the ancient absorption custom with more than the ancient d - sestive power. The Middle Europe migration, that tremendous outpouring oi crushed disfranchised humanity, overflow from that strange maelstrom into which has been drawn the wreckage of a dozen exhausted n tions, a migration against which t Washington Government has at la been forced to protect itself, is doubt less not a source of strength to American patriotism; y et nelthe , it a source of danger to the Anglo American understanding. The In vote might be a source of danger if it were as claimed by rabid A g " phobists. But even the Irish element is being gradually absorbe . The Roman Catholic Church o y claimed 8,277,039 members ai 1890 out of a total population of 62,480,040, and of these a large allowance, c - tainly 25 per cent., must benia for German, Italian, and othei Con tinental Catholics. It is religion which keeps the Celt his racial religion he gradually melts into the Anglo-American mass; so that we may take the Catholic Irish as representing tne maximum distinctly Irish vote. But we know taat in the British colonies, where in frequent cases the Catholic element is from 25 to 30 per cent, of the total population, there is no genera hatred of the Imperial Crown to be found. As a matter of fact, Irishism is dead the Irish throughout the world feel this, though they may not admit it. They have given hostages to fortune in the new lands into which they have entered. With the death of all hopes of an Irish nationality, they must necessarily take increasingly intelligent part in the politics of the dominant race, into which, in spite of their religion, they are being drawn. The distinctly Irish do not constitute a tenth of the voters at an American election, and could not possibly modify, much less withstand, any great national movement. To summarise, it is seemingly clear that the Anglo-American rupture of 1776 is being practically closed. In a very short time, if not already, the world must regard the English-speaking countries not only as one Power for all purposes of defence, but as ready each ti. see that the other is not overwhelmed in any operations it may be compelled to undertake on behalf of that mission of civilisation which is the avowed mission of the English-speaking race. We need not refer to the tremendous change thus made in the balance of world-power. A kindred of 125,000,000 of the strongest fighting race the world has seen, sworn to enforce the Pax Britannicum, may well hope to realise the Imperial dream of the great Victorian poet, that "the kindly earth will slumber, lapped in universal law."